For many businesses, management of customer interaction is a critical component of the business that has become increasingly complex in an era of electronic commerce. For example, in the financial services industry, once a credit card has been issued, credit card issuers may have difficulties managing customer relationships. Customers may receive statements by mail or may receive electronic billing statements. Customers will often disregard communications sent in conjunction with this billing information.
Furthermore, communications from a card issuer to a customer that are sent by mail will often be discarded immediately as junk mail. Pop-up blockers and email spam filters may prevent customers from receiving electronic communications from credit card companies.
Often, in order to facilitate customized development of customer credit packages, a credit card issuer will attach a sticker to a standard credit card, giving the customer a telephone number to call in order to activate the card. Even if the customer is not required to make this initial telephone call, the sticker on the card can encourage the customer to make this initial telephone call. During this initial telephone call, the customer or new account holder will often be offered ancillary products, such as insurance or rewards that operate in conjunction with the existing account. Thus, a single communication between the customer and the credit issuer may result in a customized product for the customer that results in increased revenue for the credit card issuer.
Based on subsequent customer card usage, a card issuer can determine additional products in which the customer might be interested. Furthermore, the card issuer may want to notify a customer that a credit limit has been exceeded or that a potential fraudulent use had been detected. However, as set forth above, creating additional dialogue with a customer can be problematic. Existing solutions to this problem such as email notifications and mailings have been ineffective.
Thus, a solution is needed that takes advantage of evolving credit card technologies to establish contact with a credit cardholder. Such credit card technologies include the utilization of a light emitting polymer (LEP) display to communicate with the cardholder. A card having this display and other relevant features is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,631,849, which is hereby incorporated by reference. The LEP display is preferably thin and flexible may cover, for example, a portion of the surface of the card or it may cover the whole surface of at least one side of the card. Information and/or instructions may appear on the display. The information may, for example, be an image, characters, numbers or any combination thereof. denoting the credit card-issuing authority, the credit card company and its logo.
In addition to LEP displays, other types of displays are known in the art. The display may be a liquid crystal display (LCD), a field emission display (FED), a surface conduction electron-emitter display (SED), an interferometric modulator (IMOD) display or a vacuum fluorescent display (VFD). Other technologies may also be implemented.
Using these evolving card technologies, the solution should prompt a customer to contact the credit issuer by telephone, website, or other communication channel, thereby enabling the card issuer to communicate more effectively with customers.